On the ledge

Tonight, after a lovely night of sipping a massive yogurt, fruit tower beverage with my roommate in the romantically lit hookah / coffee shop, I made my way home feeling a little adventurous, a little sick of my routine. So my first few steps into the house I immediately have the idea to climb the rickety winding staircase only used by the garbage man up to the roof. The roof is covered in old cement and wiring and a giant satellite dish.

I ducked under a wire to sit on the ledge at the edge of this roof. Its quiet up here. By this I mean, the horns and shouting are muffled because I'm several stories above it all. I lay down on this ledge, somewhat carefully. To my right, one of the giant mosques of Cairo is visible a few miles away through the gap between the other high rise buildings next to ours, a Christian family with religious art posted all over their room visible through a window, the satellite dish looming over my head. If I roll or fall over to this side, I would land on the roof, safe.

To my left, a much larger portion of the skyline is visible. The trees on the side of the Nile, the medical school, a lit up building that looks like something important in Washington D.C., and the Islamic moon (a crescent that looks kinda like a boat) above it all. If I roll or fall over to this side, I fall at least a couple stories before I hit a balcony, potentially to the ground.

I try to keep my weight shifted to the right side as I lay balanced on this narrow ledge, one shoulder blade on each side, my hood beneath my head, my legs crossed. I feel a little precarious here as I look up at the few visible stars and shift my head slightly to see the Islamic moon.

But I stay on this ledge, and I think about the whole concept of ledges. My life feels this way at the moment. With two months left, I am balanced here between Egypt and America, belonging and being an outsider, investing in friends and pushing them away.

But the stars are still there.

And then, I walk down the rickety, winding, garbage man staircase, push open the door, and its like the Wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I see the kettle on the stove in our lighted kitchen, and its a different world, my world here, opening up before me. Its still there, somehow completely separate from the world above that I've been visiting.

And everything comes down to these ledges, these boundaries between worlds again, but what is it that pervades all these worlds? And what is it about laying balanced on a ledge that's so exciting and stressful at the same time?